?• The Grumpster believes that a major issue with this country is its inability to turn brilliant ideas into practical solutions.

Our prime minister, Saint Teresa shares my views on this. Many times, over a pint of Guinness and a steak pie, she has opened up to me over our lamentable inability to make the ideas of our great thinkers a reality.

• Well, I am pleased to announce that we now have a solution. That great “palace ideas guru”, His Royal Jackass, Prince Andrew, Duke of York is currently out of work, having just finished a six month tour of the world’s golf courses. Mother Teresa has persuaded him to take up the role of Director of Ideas Management (DIM), with a budget of £100m, a helicopter, yacht, private jet and a team of consultants, toothpaste squeezing flunkeys and self-professed experts, to turn mind-blowingly brilliant ideas into tangible deliverables. A press conference is scheduled for next month and the Grumpster has had an exclusive sneak preview of the key ideas, which I will summarise for you now:

• (1) Eliminate lunch time drinking in the City - there is still a hard core of imbibers who stubbornly refuse to go to the gym, jog or eat soggy, overpriced, lukewarm pasta in their office “restaurants”. To resolve this impasse, the famously teetotal prince has designed a delicious Guinness alternative - water, squid ink and low fat cream. Drinkers won’t notice the difference. Expect the new “prince’s ale” to be rolled out to select City pubs by the Spring.

• (2) Retain and hold the cricket ashes. With the invaluable support of cricket’s “number one expert”, Ian Beefburger Botham, the Prince will propose that England are allowed to field 20 players and the Australians must wear blind-folds. We will still probably lose, but it is worth a try.

• (3) Simultaneously solve the pressing NHS A&E overcrowding issue and car-parking charge scandal (thanks to Jeremy Hunt for this one). Transfer A&E overspill to the car park and charge patients’ families, nurses and doctors £25 a day “parking” to attend to them. Brilliant in its simplicity.

• Anyway, as mentioned, the conference will take place in February, unless the Prince is called away on urgent golf business in Dubai. After the announcement, I gather there will a buffet of cold-comfort sandwiches and as much Prince’s ale as you can drink. I can’t wait.